Why Culture Counts: Teaching Children of Poverty

by Donna Walker Tileston

Current models do not address the complexity of achievement gaps among racial and socioeconomic groups. As the National Task Force on Minority High Achievement and current assessment data show, children of color, even those who are not poor, often score lower on achievement tests than whites who are poor. Culture trumps poverty in its impact on achievement. Culture defines what children will focus their attention on, how they interpret the world to give it meaning, what background knowledge they bring to learning, and how they will value that learning. The focus of our interventions to close the achievement gap must therefore be to attend to the culture of the learner. This book shows how to build the necessary supports to move classrooms from the traditional, Eurocentric model to one that respects and incorporates the cultures of the learners.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

196 pages, Paperback

First published August 18, 2008

Reviews

[Jimmy8013]

The book ‘Why Culture Counts: Teaching Children of Poverty’ has broadened most people’s perspectives about education especially me, the book introduces readers to various new concepts as well as strategies for ensuring success to all children in a school environment. The authors therefore argumentatively inform people that education is possible to all. From the book, I, therefore, perceive education to be dependent on many aspects such as the culture of the child, poverty issues and general social background of the child. This new perspective is, therefore, different from the initial one where I believed that education was self-dependent and associated with uniformity in all aspects of the instructional materials and methods.

Read the full review at https://uniquewritersbay.com/culture-...

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps if I didn't already teach a diverse crowd, I would have found it more empowering. I can tell you though, I will not be greeting my students with "Jambo!" at the door.

[Karau Gari]

The book ‘Why Culture Counts: Teaching Children of Poverty’ has broadened most people’s perspectives about education especially me, the book introduces readers to various new concepts as well as strategies for ensuring success to all children in a school environment. The authors therefore argumentatively inform people that education is possible to all. From the book, I, therefore, perceive education to be dependent on many aspects such as the culture of the child, poverty issues and general social background of the child. This new perspective is, therefore, different from the initial one where I believed that education was self-dependent and associated with uniformity in all aspects of the instructional materials and methods.

The book has many relations to the trend of the future of education. The future of education refers to those educational practices that guarantee future success of better quality of teaching (Peterson, 1968). The authors suggest various approaches to education and their significant roles in enhancing the final quality of teaching. For example, different from the traditional practices that involved teachers teaching their learners uniformly in a classroom using stipulated instructional strategies, the authors exposes us to the need and relevance of assessing the students to establish their educational baselines and future success in the educational fields. Read the full review at https://uniquewritersbay.com/blog/cul...